Standard practice in the repair of roads and highways is to have a moving vehicle such as a dump truck, filled with road repair material, move slowly forward along the road with a crew of highway repairmen walking therebehind. The repair material is removed from the dumpster bed of the truck and deposited in road holes, cracks or the like by shoveling or the operation of a gate at the rear of the dumpster bed. The material, such as asphalt, is thereafter smoothed over by repair crews using shovels, rakes, and the like. Since the asphalt or other material is commonly maintained at a temperature of between 300.degree. and 500.degree. F., the job of smoothing out the road surface after patching is both tedious and exhausting, and it must be quickly performed before the repair material cools and hardens. Obviously, the vehicle can move only as fast as the road crew can smooth the patches over, thus the process of road repair by this method is quite slow. Further, depending upon the level of skill of the individual road worker, the finished patch may be uneven or otherwise not finished sufficiently to provide a smooth surface.
There is thus a need in the art for a method of road repair which eliminates the need for manual spreading of the repair material, and which can produce a smooth, evenly patched surface. The present invention meets this need by providing a mold board secured to the rear of the moving vehicle, which spreads and compacts the repair material automatically as it is drawn over the patch.